Friday, July 05, 2013

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia had received no request for political asylum from Snowden and he had to solve his problems himself after 11 days in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

President Vladimir Putin has refused to extradite the American and Russian officials have delighted in his success in staying out of the United States' clutches since revealing details of secret U.S. government surveillance programs.

But Moscow also has made clear that Snowden is an increasingly unwelcome guest because the longer he stays, the greater the risk of the diplomatic standoff causing lasting damage to relations with Washington.

"He needs to choose a place to go," Ryabkov told Reuters.

Of course, Snowden's problem is nobody wants to take him. I imagine this is not the scenario he had in his head when he decided to go public. It seems he didn't calculate the geopolitical complications in seeking asylum. Kind of surprising. You might think a guy smart enough to hack closely guarded NSA data would have anticipated this in advance.

5 Comments:

Could just be that this was truly a matter of conscience for him and he was aware that his future was not full of good things. Hard to imagine he didn't think this would happen, but looks like he's got a home for now, if only he can get there without this damn country running roughshod through the rights of every country to hunt its witches.

Not making any judgement calls on his motives. Just surprised he didn't seem to anticipate the media attn or the political blowback. I mean, I anticipated it as soon as he went public. Would have thought he'd have a more complete plan with several fallback scenarios. I get the sense the kid thought it was going to be easier.

See this morning Venezuela is "considering" taking him. They've been saying that for over a week now. Don't see any concrete offers yet.